My Research Paper

For my research paper I decided to write on the media influence on the youth of today. I picked this topic because the media is very effective in the upbringing of our culture and I feel that the youth is the most influential group being targeted. I wrote about both positive and negative aspects of the media's influence, in order to show that there are both sides to the story. Most negative aspects of the media have positive side effects that are there to combat whatever may be wrong. For my op-ed piece I decided to write a blog at thoughts.com. I basically talked about our assignment and how I conducted a public service about it. I went to my local church and handed out brochures to the parishoners. I allowed them to take copies of them and I made myself available to answer any questions or comments they might have. I posted most of the brochure information on the blog, which I am posting a link for here.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2806848821722306185

Historical Election

This past week our country witnessed perhaps the most historical election in our history. That is because, for the first time ever, an african american has been elected president of the United States. This change brought about in our country is a very big step in the way we percieve difference and equality. This election was very popular in many ways. We saw a dramatic increase in voter turnout, especially the african american and young vote. It's good to see that our country is still widely affected by the minority and young influence. Maya Angelou once said, "Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise." To me, this line from her poem relays a message that directly coorelates to this election. She talks about the pain of the past, and all the struggles and hardships her people went through. But she still rises, and stands up for herself. This election was a way for the african american population to use their voice that they weren't so sure they posessed. And by using that voice, they have forever changed the future of this country, side by side with every type of citizen living in the U.S.

Election Day

Yesterday was a very exciting and dissapointing day for me. This was my first election and it meant a lot to me to be involved in such an immense election year. It began like any other day and seemed to be going well. I had been fighting with many friends for so long now about this election and it was all starting to get very repetitive. Of course, I'm a McCain supporter, so I've been up against a lot of people. I couldn't wait to go home and vote. Once I was done with classes, I went to work with my dad for awhile, and he said he waited about an hour and a half to vote. The same was with my brother, uncles, and grandparents. So I expected to be in line for quite awhile before I could cast my vote. I waited at home for my sister and mom and as soon as they were both home, we went to the polls. We actually waited for about ten minutes before we voted. There was really no one there, so we were extremely lucky to get there at the perfect time. After we voted we had to go home and get ready for some family to come over. It was my mom's birthday, so we had a small get together for her. With my family there, we watched the election coverage all night and we couldn't belive what was happenening. I really never expected the election to go this way. So I was extremely upset after learning McCain had lost, and I really didn't care to watch the rest of the coverage after that. Hopefully we get it right in 2012.

Polish Eagle

This is a picture of the Polish Eagle. My entire family comes from a Polish background, so I've grown up around the Polish culture my entire life. I take a lot of pride in my heritage, and my brother and I hope to start a Polish-American club at school later this year. The Polish Eagle has always represented me in a lot of ways, and I love displaying it in public, whether it be on my shirt, or on my chain I wear around my neck. I'm also going to be getting this tattooed on my back later this year.

Mid-term writing

So far this semester, I really feel like I've improved my writing in many areas. For the most part, I know that the flow of my writing has become a lot smoother, and my transitioning between ideas has improved as well. I started out the semester needing a lot of work on using factual evidence, and citing it too. I've noticed that my papers become full circle when I use more evidence to make my point. In the beginning, I found it hard to stay on topic when we were assigned a paper that was a lot longer than what I was used to writing. I would have paragraphs of useless information just to fill the length requirement, and I now know which information to look for and use to make it interesting and on topic throughout the entire paper.

finally some work

Every summer I have a part time job with my dad, working with him and his home improvement business. That's actually really exciting to me because I get to make money and have a really good time. My dad pretty much runs a family business so when we need extra help, my uncles, cousins and brother are always there to make it seem less like work and more entertaining. Now that I've been in school for a while, work has really slowed down, because I have class and other stuff going on. So it's been really frustrating to me because I've constantly been pulling money out of my savings because I'm broke! This week is good because my dad just started a big job and I'll be able to work at least all this week with him, and I also have been working with my uncles on the side. Sooner or later I need to get a steady job to give myself a reliable income, but until then I'll have these smaller side jobs to hold me over.

Religion in Public Life

I believe that religion shouldn't be made such a public thing. I'm happy with the way it's regarded now. People should not be guided or influenced to adopt other people's beliefs. Religion should always remain a personal choice, and it shouldn't be heavily regarded when making judgements about people or other countries. But, religion can be a uniting thing when it's on display. People unite together under a common religious bond, and they share a spiritual connection with others that share their same feelings. So, in that regard, I think religion shouldn't be forced upom anyone, but I believe if religious groups practice in a way that doesn't affect or impose on anyone else, nothing should be changed about how they do their business.

Learning from Research

After reading the web pages on how to "hook" your audience and write a strong paper, I learned a lot about making the introduction the strongest point of the paper. The intro should include your overall claim, and should state all your main points which you will further prove and analyze throughout your paper. All the information in the paragraphs that make up the body of the paper should be an in depth look at the information you presented early on in your writing. A good way to hook your reader is to start off by presenting enough information to get your reader interested, but by also hiding enough information to keep them questioning and guessing. Hooking your audience is very important because a paper will only succeed if it's easily understood and interesting enough for a reader to clearly see and understand the writers claim and intention.

Busy weekend

This weekend wasn't supposed to be too stressful, but of course it got filled pretty quick, and once again I'll be pressed for time. First of all, I need to be back and forth to and from school all weekend because I'm pledging a fraternity and theres a lot that needs to be done. And for tonight, I need to pick up my girlfriend from her cousins and meet my friends and their girlfriends so we can all go out. We are planning on going to my aunts in Belleville because my uncle owns a haunted house and hayride that they operate on their land. My family connection gets us in for free, so no ones complaining about that. The only thing is that my friend's girlfriend gets out of work at 9:30, and after a half hour drive i don't know if we will make it by closing time. Then after that I have to take my girlfriend back to her dorm, only to pick her up again tommorow for the Carrie Underwood concert. Now Country is my favorite music, but I'm not all that excited for this concert. My friend bought tickets with his gf too so it'll be a good time. The whole reason we are actually going is my mom won floor seats and said we could take them. And it's kind of my fault for getting my girlfriend addicted to country, so I gotta deal with it. After the concert at the Joe, I need to drive my girlfriend to her house in Novi, so she can stay at home until her mom takes her back to school. And Sunday will start out with church, and then end with more fraternity work that I hope to get done. So this weekend equals a lot of plans, and a lot of gas money.

The 3 day Walk

This weekend was the 3 day breast cancer walk. I didnt participate this year, but my two cousins walked for my aunt who died a few years ago. Today my mom and I were on our way to church, and we noticed that the route they walked cut across our neighborhood. So my mom called my cousin to see where they were, but we had missed them by about an hour. So we drove to the next checkpoint and waited for them. Seeing all those people walking for a common cause was really inspiring to me. And after seeing something on that large a scale, you kinda take a step back and look at things a little differently. While waiting we saw a lot of people that had come out to support their family members that were walking, and it seemed to really help them out and give them that extra step to continue on. So finally we met up with my cousins, and they told us a little bit about the weekend. They were all bandaged up and out of breath, but after we talked with them and told them we were proud of them they caught a second wind and were really excited to finish up their journey. This year was the first year they participated, and they wanted to get a group together to go next year. So my mom and I said we would join them and get a lot of our other family members to go and walk too.

The Family Sport

This week I was really thinking about what would be a good blog topic, and I couldn't think of anything. So I decided to write about my favorite sport, which is hockey, and how my family is really tied into it. Ever since I can remember I have always gone to watch my dad, uncles, and cousins play hockey, so it was no surprise when I started playing about 12 years ago. My dad and his brothers have been playing their entire lives, and I can remember watching them play every winter in Detroit, at Clark Park, which is an outside rink. I was really excited when I was finally allowed to play in those games every Super Bowl Sunday. I have two older cousins who I grew up watching too. My one cousin played for WMU, and then played for about 5 years in the ECHL. My other cousin played for the Plymouth Whalers, and also played in the AHL, ECHL, and IHL. He currently plays in Italy, and will most likely be playing for them in the 2010 olympics in Vancouver. But one thing Ill never forget is when he was called up to the NHL to play for the Carolina Hurricanes. This all started back in 2001 when my family vacation that year was to travel to Boston for the NHL Draft. My cousin was drafted by the Hurricanes, and played for their farm team for the next few years. In 2003 I remember my uncle calling my dad and telling him my cousin was playing that weekend for the Hurricanes. So of course my dad and aunt flew to Carolina to watch the game in person. The rest of my family went to my uncles house to watch the game. It was a really big inspiration to see my own cousin in the NHL, and playing with some of the best players in the world. Well later in the game, we all got to see my cousin score his first goal in his first NHL game. We all were going crazy and couldn't believe it. And later that night when we came home, we put on sportscenter to wait for the game highlights. And better yet, his goal was the third top play of the week! Hockey has always been a big part of my family, and Im lucky to be so close to them and be able to join in on it. So below I'm posting the link to the youtube video of my cousins goal.
www.youtube.com/v/5rn2ZtUMSMg

The SRB Fair

Well this weekend was the parish festival at my old grade school, St. Robert Bellarmine. And every year, around the middle of September, the festival comes around and it's usually a fun time...This weekend in September is usually the only time in the year that I can meet up with all my friends I went to grade school with and hang out with them. But not so much this year...The festival lasts for three days, and i'm usually there for most of it because I only live a block away, and I have a friend that's close by that always goes with me. Well Friday night we head up there expecting to run into the kids we went to school with so long ago, and there were maybe thirty total people there. And I figured most people would be there on Friday because it was going to be the nicest day of the weekend. But I was wrong. So Saturday we go there again, meet a few old friends, then get caught in the ridiculous rain that never stopped throughout the entire day. It was absolutely the most boring day I may have ever witnessed. So we decided we would just leave and head to the mall, go to dinner, really just do anything that involved being inside and having some fun atleast..The day wasn't totally shot. Well anyway, to make a long story short, I didn't meet up with barely any old friends, and I experienced the worst possible weekend to hold a festival. But there is always today, and as soon as I finish this post I'll be heading back to see what's going on, if anything at all.

My first week of college

Im finally considered a college student. Ive been really excited to start school all summer at UMD because I was really ready to be done with the whole high school situation. And last Wednesday was my first official day, and my longest school day of the week. I can't complain because i did get out at 12:45. That is my schedule for Monday's and Wednesday's, and on Tuesday's and Thursday's i have one class that ends at 11:10. And best of all my Friday's consist of one class at 8:00 A.M. It was very important to me to get all my classes over with as soon as i could because I wanted to have the rest of the day off after class to do whatever I needed to do. So far i'm completely loving college life. I look forward to participating in different school activities and clubs. Most of all I'm excited to pledge my brother's fraternity. I've come to know most of the guys over the last few years, and I think it would be a great benefit to me to join and make new connections and friends of my own. I fully believe that half the fun of college is meeting new people, and I've already met some friends that I'm glad I've come into contact with already. That's basically a small synopsis of what I think of college so far, so I'm gonna end this blog with an explanation of my blog's title, "In the Crease." I thought about what my blog should be titled, and I figured I would have to think of something that was personally connected to me. So I decided to go with something that pertained to my favorite activity, which is hockey. In hockey, the crease is the area of ice in front of the net, which is where the goalie is. I knew that this blog would be a way for me to share my feelings and thoughts to everyone, on any kind of topic, so It's sort of my crease, or my own little area that I'm inviting everyone to be a part of. That's my blog for today, so I hope everyone is enjoying college so far and everything connected to it.